Woods, you have pushed me back into confusion. Let me walk through it slowly.
[Micah had said]
I will assume you live in the States, and therefore you own nuclear
weapons, since this is a government of the people, by the people and
for the people. There is no line.
When I said that this form of semantic "ownership" wasn't the issue...
[Woods replied]
that's exactly what I was talking about.
Micah attempts to dissolves the line of civilian/miliatry ownership
by pointing out that civilians (as taxpayers) DO own the weapons.
Fine, I say, both you and Micah want NO LINE. But whereas your point
was indeed a contrasting of "what my neighbor owns versus what I
own", you are talking about something different than Micah's point.
If your neighbor had a rifle, and it was one YOU contributed money
towards, so that you technically "owned it", but your neighbor
exercised full power over its use, it does you no good to say "my
neighbor and I both own a rifle". He can still use it to enslave you,
and you can't use it to protect yourself.
[Woods]
that's what you kept trying to steer this discussion into a citizens
versus military issue. That was your dividing line, not mine.
[Arlo]
You are talking in abstractions and I am trying to get at the
pragmatic ends of those abstractions. This line is not "my line", it
is OUR line. We LIVE in a country where weapon ownership IS
differentiated between civilian and military groups. And this
differentiation is not dissolved by saying, "well, technically the
taxpayers own those tanks". The fact remains that I am NOT ALLOWED to
drive, operate, own or make use of that tank.
So my question was, and is, in what way would YOU change the current
system? By wanting "no line" demarcating privileges between
"military" and "civilian" people, you have two directions you can go.
One is towards arming the civilians. The other is towards disarming
the military. But your abstracted end-result, if I understand, is a
world where there is no military, as this service (or lack thereof)
is returned to the people-as-a-whole.
If you want to dissolve the line differently, you'll have to give me
some concrete examples of what life is a post-duality world
(considering the civilian-military duality) would look like. Would
there be tanks, for example? If so, would they be owned and
distributed the same way we own cars? Or would tanks be abolished?
Simply saying "we are all people" and "its about morality" says
nothing whatsoever. Yes, we are all people. Yes, its about morality.
No tell me how the people should morally organize weapons? Any
organization? No organization? Outlawed? Proliferated? What???
Moq_Discuss mailing list
Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc.
http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org
Archives:
http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/
http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
